The continent’s football governing body has reschedule the date for the World Cup qualifying playoffs draw on Friday
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has opted to change the draw date for 2022 Fifa World Cup playoffs following an Extraordinary Assembly held in Egypt on Friday, AshesGyamera.com can confirm.
The draw, which was initially scheduled to take place on December 18, 2021, has now been moved to January 26, 2022 after members agreed to the decision.
As a result, the Fifa rankings for January 2022 will be used to seed the countries for the draw and the top five ranking countries on the continent will not meet themselves.
However, they will be paired with the remaining five unseeded countries
As per the latest ranking released by Fifa a week ago for the month of November, Senegal were the highest ranked African country.
The West African country ended the group stage of the World Cup qualifiers with an unbeaten run of five wins and a draw in six games. They are ranked 20th on the world stage.
North African giants Morocco moved to second position after overtaking Tunisia thanks to the back-to-back 3-0 victories over Sudan and Guinea in Group I of the qualifiers.
Tunisia are now ranked in third place on the continent as the Carthage Eagles topped Group B of the qualifiers.
African champions Algeria and Nigeria complete the top five spots in fourth and fifth place respectively while Egypt are in sixth position.
2021 Afcon hosts Cameroon occupy seventh position while Ghana are in eight position above Mali and Ivory Coast who follow in that order.
Should Ghana win the match fixing and manipulation protests filed against them by South Africa, then they could face either Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia or Nigeria for a place at the World Cup next year.
The playoffs will be a double header and the games have been billed to take place in March 2022.
Ghana FA and South Africa Football Association are waiting for the final verdict from Fifa in the coming days and South Africa want a replay since they believe Senegalese referee Meguitta Ndiaye was influenced to award Ghana what they term as a dubious penalty